Friday, February 17, 2012

Ryan Gosling

Ryan Thomas Gosling (born November 12, 1980) is a Canadian actor and musician. He first came to public attention as a child star on the Disney Channel's Mickey Mouse Club (1993–95) and went on to appear in other family entertainment programs including Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1995), Goosebumps (1996), Breaker High (1997–98) and Young Hercules (1998–99). His first serious role was as a Jewish neo-Nazi in The Believer (2001), and he then built a reputation for playing misfits in independent films such as Murder by Numbers (2002), The Slaughter Rule (2002), The United States of Leland (2003) and Stay (2005).

Gosling came to the attention of a wider audience in 2004 when he was given a leading role in the romantic drama The Notebook, for which he won four Teen Choice Awards and an MTV Movie Award. His performance as a drug-addicted teacher in Half Nelson (2006) was nominated for an Academy Award and his performance as a socially inept loner in Lars and the Real Girl (2007) was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. In 2007, he starred in the courtroom thriller Fracture.

After a three-year acting hiatus, Gosling starred in both Blue Valentine and All Good Things in 2010. The former performance as a frazzled husband earned him a second Golden Globe nomination. 2011 proved to be a landmark year for the actor as he appeared in three mainstream films – the romantic comedy Crazy, Stupid, Love, the thriller Drive and the political drama The Ides of March – and received two Golden Globe nominations. He is due to appear in five upcoming films: the period crime feature Gangster Squad, the generational drama The Place Beyond the Pines, the revenge drama Only God Forgives, Terrence Malick's Lawless, and a remake of the sci-fi film Logan's Run.

Gosling's band, Dead Man's Bones, released their self-titled debut album and toured North America in 2009. He is a co-owner of Tagine, a Moroccan restaurant in Beverly Hills, California. He is a supporter of both PETA and the Enough Project and has travelled to Chad, Uganda and eastern Congo to raise awareness about conflicts in the region. He has dated Sandra Bullock and Rachel McAdams and is in a relationship with Eva Mendes.

Early Life

Ryan Thomas Gosling was born in London, Ontario. He is the son of Thomas Gosling, a traveling salesman for a paper mill, and Donna, a secretary who qualified as a high school teacher in 2011. Because of his father's work, they "moved around a lot"and Gosling lived in both Cornwall, Ontario and Burlington, Ontario. His parents were Mormons, and Gosling has said that the religion influenced every aspect of their lives. His parents divorced when he was a child and he and his older sister, Mandi, lived with their mother, an experience Gosling has credited with programming him "to think like a girl."

Gosling was educated at Gladstone Public School, Cornwall Collegiate and Vocational School and Lester B. Pearson High School. He "hated" being a child. He was bullied in elementary school and had no friends until he was "14 or 15". In Grade 1, having been heavily influenced by the film First Blood, he brought steak knives to school and threw them at other children during recess. This incident led to a suspension. He was unable to read. He was later diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), prescribed Ritalin, and placed in a class for special needs students. Consequently, his mother quit her job and homeschooled him for a year. Gosling has said that homeschooling gave him "a sense of autonomy that I've never really lost".

Gosling performed from an early age. He and his sister sang together at weddings; he performed with Elvis Perry, his uncle's Elvis Presley tribute act, and was involved with a local ballet company. Performing boosted his self-confidence as it was the only thing he received praise for. He developed an idiosyncratic accent because, as a child, he thought having a Canadian accent didn't sound "tough". He began to model his accent on that of Marlon Brando. He dropped out of high school at the age of seventeen to focus on his acting career.

Personal Life

Gosling lives in New York City. He co-owns Tagine, a Moroccan restaurant in Beverly Hills, California. He bought the restaurant on an impulse and spent "all my money" on it. He spent a year doing the renovation work himself and now oversees the restaurant's menus.

Gosling dated American actress Sandra Bullock for a year from 2002 to 2003. He had a two-year relationship with Canadian actress Rachel McAdams from mid-2005 to mid-2007. They briefly reunited in the summer of 2008. Following their split, he described McAdams as "one of the great loves of my life". He dated Kat Dennings in late 2009, Blake Lively in late 2010 and Olivia Wilde in early 2011. Gosling began dating American actress and model Eva Mendes in September 2011.

Fox News and the New York Post have reported that Gosling was arrested by LAPD officers on 17 March 2005. Gosling pleaded "no contest" to a misdemeanor charge of "exhibiting speed," despite being originally charged with "driving under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs" and "driving with a blood alcohol content of 0.08 or greater." He was sentenced to two years of probation and ordered to pay $849 in fines.

Gosling is supportive of various social causes. He has worked with PETA on a campaign to encourage KFC and McDonalds to use improved methods of chicken slaughter in their factories. Gosling volunteered in Biloxi, Mississippi in 2005, as part of the clean-up effort following Hurricane Katrina. He is a supporter of Invisible Children Inc, a charity which helps children affected by the LRA in Central Africa. In 2005, Gosling travelled to Darfur refugee camps in Chad. He was a speaker at Campus Progress's National Conference in 2008 where he discussed Darfur. As part of his work with the Enough Project, he visited Uganda in 2007 and eastern Congo in 2010.